Is cellphone driving ban working?

A recent study questions whether the new law has made streets safer in California

There is no shortage of grim statistics depicting the deadly consequences of texting or talking on a cellphone behind the wheel.

As research has mounted, dozens of states have implemented bans on cellphone use in an effort to make the roadways safer.

But a recent research study out of a Colorado university questions whether bans are having their desired effect — at least in California.

After taking a look at the number of collisions six months before California’s cellphone ban was implemented in July 2008 and the six months after it went into effect, researchers determined there was no evidence crashes were reduced.

“If it’s really that dangerous, and if even just a fraction of people stopped using their phones, we would expect to find some decrease in accidents,” said Daniel Kaffine, an associate professor of economics at University of Colorado, Boulder, and an author of the study. “But we didn’t find any statistical evidence of a reduction.”

State officials rejected the study, citing research they commissioned that showed a significant decrease in fatal crashes after the ban went into effect. Local law enforcement officers also backed the laws, saying they’ve resulted in safer driving.

It turns out Kaffine and his fellow researchers aren’t the first ones to question how effective cellphone bans might be — or if cellphone use even correlates with more crashes.

In a 2013 study published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, a group of researchers analyzed nationwide, single-vehicle, single-occupant crash numbers during the time a number of states enacted text messaging bans.

They found that, initially, there was a notable drop in collisions, but it was short lived. After only three months, crashes had crept back up to levels seen before the texting ban was in place.

Another study, published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, took advantage of a natural experiment to determine if cellphone use correlated with more collisions. In 2005, a number of cellphone plans offered free calls after 9 p.m., resulting in more calls placed by drivers around that time.

They found that while more drivers were chatting behind the wheel, the crash rate in the same area the calls were made didn’t go up.

Kaffine said while his study wasn’t designed to identify why cellphone bans didn’t result in more crashes in California during that period, the study did suggest some possible reasons:

• Drivers may have switched to hands-free devices, even though experiments suggest that method is equally distracting.

• People might simply be ignoring the ban.

• Motorists who choose to use their cellphones and drive might be the type of drivers who engage in other distracting behaviors. These drivers might be replacing one distracting behavior, cellphone use, with any number of other distracting tasks.

• Using a phone while driving might not be as dangerous as previously thought.

“Determining which, if any, of these reasons may have led to the ineffectiveness of California’s ban could lead to better cellphone policies in the future,” Kaffine said.